many small worlds

art by Maggie Siner

                                          

You like your many, small words. 

I like, adore, cherish, love, love, love you.

I cannot live without you, cannot breathe without you, cannot bear to look at the world without you in it. 

And so, I walk with my head down. 

And so, I pretend you are walking with me, with your head held high.

I have only seen you bow your head once.

Your lone white flag.

When I'm alone again, your memories tenderly fall around me like our blue blanket. Oh, that blanket. I sleep underneath it for weeks, I pretend I'm dead like you are. Oh, that damned blanket.

Soft, affectionate, warm... and now I'm lying on the limestone tiles again. The cold tile against my skin reminds me that you're gone, and I'm still here. 

I pretend my tears are all you, raining hard, pouring, lashing, pelting. 

I tried and tried and try vehemently, stubbornly, adamantly, obstinately, to fill the You-shaped hole in my chest. I see stars, I see the world spin, I watch the walls cave in, I hallucinate all types of things in my drug hazes. But never you. Never you. Why do you hide away in the nooks of my mind?

Sometimes I wonder if I dreamed you up, but I remember this is the only month I have lived to see the universe without a You in it. It has been a dreary, dark, drab, heartbreaking one. 

I am worn to my bones. 

I wonder if I might join you wherever you are if I only tried. Oh, and I remember then, I tried several times, only to fail miserably. Each time I woke up, ashamed, furious.. alive. 

Alive. Dead. Alive. Dead. Dying. 

Maybe you're in one of these small words of mine, a small world of ours.